The Ang Ku Kueh Boy

It still amuses me how their faces look like it's the end of the world - over a few pieces of kueh??

A friend once asked me what the hell it's like to live in a house that makes the best ang ku kueh in town, eating all you want of those melt~in~your~mouth kueh.

I say phewww. Imagine waking up to the rich, cloying smell of glutinous rice flour and steaming yellow~bean paste for 13 years ~ believe me, the memory alone bloats the tummy and kills any appetite for breakfast.

The ordeal begins when a family friend calls to ask my father if he can whip up his sought~after kueh for, say, a baby shower. The recipe is one that dad took from my grandmother in 1985, and what started as a gastronomic hobby of steaming up the nonya delicacy for close friends quickly won him a firm following of fans over the years.

The night before the 200 pieces of kueh are to be picked up, dad squeezes and boils the coconut milk while mum cooks the bean paste. The ingredients were picked up earlier in a quick trip to Zhujiao market. I remember , as a small boy, helping my parents squeeze the grated coconut was a deadly boring task that left my forearms aching afterwards. By the time I hit my bed, sleepy~eyed, the sweet warm smells are wafting through the entire house.

Before sunrise, at about 6am, dad is up again and kneading the dough - a mixture of oil, coconut milk and rice flour. When he's almost done, mum joins him to roll the bean~paste into sticky balls. Then I get dragged out of bed to assemble the boxes - a job I was supposed to have done the night before, but as usual, I was too lazy to finish. 30 boxes later, my job is done ( usually with my eyes half~closed) and it's my sister's turn. She helps to steam and pack the final kueh.

Not everything runs so smoothly all the times. Sometimes my father will oversleep - and panicky friends will be told , when they turn up to collect their kueh at the appointed time, that they have to return in the evening. It still amuses me how their faces look like it's the end of the world - over a few pieces of kueh??

I confess, I myself have never been able to appreciate what it is about my father's ang ku kueh that so many others seem to find it irresistible. It did have one undesirable side effect on me, though.

Living in a nonya house and surrounded by such rich cooking ingredients, I grew up with a taste for rich food and consequently, acquired a few spare ( truck) tyres. Friends would jokingly call me the "ang ku kueh" boy. That changed, thankfully, after NS when I trimmed down my diet and myself.

As for my dad? Well, he is still buying other people's ang ku kueh, biting into them and then spitting them out, growling, "How can anyone eat this? It tastes like stale coconut oil!" For someone who never touch a wok till he was in his 40s, making ang ku kueh is an art my dad had dedicated himself to mastering for years - and can be proud to say, he has.

by Terrace Teo